


Burn that bridge and walk this way

by clear



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Banter, Blood Drinking, Jealousy, M/M, Magical Realism, Vampire Hunters, unbeta'ed we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24181429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clear/pseuds/clear
Summary: “You left me for dead,” Yaku points out, and some deep part of Kuroo isn’t sure if he likes the way he says it like they’re discussing the weather and not like it’s something that angers him. Like the fact that he was in the bathroom, that he is here at all is because Kuroo is a loose end he simply wants tied up and not because he is someone he shares a personal connection with.Maybe he is a little fucked in the head if he now considers a vampire attacking a human a personal connection.Maybe he is a little more fucked in the head if he prefers someone to hold a grudge against him instead of nothing at all.
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou/Yaku Morisuke, Past Sugawara Koushi/Yaku Morisuke
Comments: 15
Kudos: 111





	Burn that bridge and walk this way

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted 2 use the last tag for so long - that said, I gently implore thee to please be kind to grammar mistakes or typos. Maybe it's a little too on the nose that this was written between the hours of 9 PM and 6 AM.

Kuroo is washing his hands in the second sink from the wall in the bathroom when he feels a pinprick of sensation at the tender spot between two vertebrae on the back of his neck. The feeling turns over and in on itself, like the nerves beneath his skin don’t know whether to register it as the cold rasp of metal or the piercing sting of white-hot pain.

He sniffs, moves his hands under the faucet again when he realizes the short spray of water has stopped automatically, leaving him with still-soapy fingers. The sensor on this sink has always had a faulty reputation. His frown deepens when he finally _does_ turn it on again, and it splashes traitorously on the sleeve of his sweater that had fallen back down his forearm after pushing it up.

The blade against his neck grows more insistent, and when it deepens with the barest threat of a nick, it burns definitively in the way silver often does so he looks up and past his own reflection in the mirror to find half a body standing behind him. It’s considerably smaller than his own, barely coming up to his shoulder when he straightens up to his full six-foot-two height. He shakes his hands a few times to rid them of excess water and says, “There’s other sinks, you know. No need to wait on mine.”

The blade presses in a little harder, and Kuroo grits his teeth to stave off the more insistent blaze of pain starting its slow slide through his nervous system. Where the hell did someone get a _fully-_ silver blade nowadays?

“It’s fine,” another voice replies, the tone tight and cautious. “I don’t need it.”

At that, Kuroo screws up his face. “You go to the bathroom without washing your hands? Gross.”

“You probably did it for centuries,” the other accuses, “and you seemed to turn out alright.”

 _Those_ words are loaded, and have definitely caught Kuroo’s interest. The voice is strikingly familiar, existing in his mind just beyond the misty edges that he can’t place, enticing him to reach out just a little farther. He decides to take the bait. He moves to turn and walks slowly over to the automatic towel dispenser closest to the door. A quick glance to the door reveals that the deadbolt has been locked.

He’s tried to catch a glimpse of the other person, but they’ve been careful to keep themselves carefully positioned in their little dance, existing just beyond the borders of his peripheral vision. He takes a moment to wave his hands under the towel dispenser, and it spits out a wrinkled, half-jammed shred of paper. He tugs on it, it rips, and he wiggles the stuck side free a little more delicately.

This is the most mundane murder attempt he’s ever been a victim of.

“You know,” Kuroo declares around a sigh as he wads up the damp towel and tosses it into the aluminum bin below the dispenser. “If I knew someone was going to try to kill me tonight, I probably would have spent my final hours doing something more _cool_ than hosting supplemental lab hours in the science building basement.”

“Allowing your students to make up labs they missed is surprisingly generous,” the other voice concedes. “It seems the other faculty were right about you being a little soft.”

Kuroo chuckles a little at that. “No, I just like being the school’s top scorer on Rate My Professors. The filled-up chili pepper and the nice things they say about me are a boost to my ego on the _bad days_.”

Then, it happens all at once. There’s a blur of movement and a hard shove to the front of Kuroo’s body, and he’s slammed against the wall beside the towel dispenser hard enough to feel the dent the back of his head makes in the drywall. The blade is pressed into the more tender column of his throat now, between the tasteful open wings of the shirt collar under his sweater. Now, it feels a _bit_ more threatening and a _lot_ hotter on his skin. His hand immediately flies up and wraps around the wrist that is about level with his sternum now, and the first thing he thinks is how _small_ it is, how his fingers easily wrap around the entire thing with room to spare. He grips it tight, probably bruising with the way he can feel the bones shift beneath skin, and he wonders if they’re delicate and hollow like a bird’s and break just as easily.

He finally, _finally_ meets eyes that bore up into his own with an intensity that many others would find intimidating straight off the bat. They are deep brown and so _large_ , but lift at the corners and match the sharp angle of ashy blonde eyebrows. Kuroo probably _would_ feel intimidated as his brain catches up to itself and realizes the devastating strength this small body has to shove a man of his size hard and rough against a wall and _pin him there_ , but any other feeling is overshadowed by the sheer surprise parading around his head right now.

Because the man in front of him is someone he’s seen before, and the gears begin turning in his head and refuse to stop. A smile that is beatific and dangerous in equal amounts glides over Kuroo’s face, and the other man simply narrows his eyes in response. Kuroo can see the set to his jaw that must be hiding some hint of strain—he’s probably hurting him, but at this point it’s a physical _quid pro quo_ : it’s only fair he pays him back for the way the silver switchblade is scorching on his skin right now.

“ _This_ is quite a surprise,” Kuroo purrs, his voice dropping an octave and dripping with honey, though he still _means_ what he says. “What brings you _here_ , of all places, Yakkun?”

The nickname apparently strikes a nerve with Morisuke Yaku, or at least the person in front of him that _looks_ exactly like him, because those delicate eyebrows pinch closer together and form a wrinkle just above the freckled slope of his button nose.

Apparently, he’s decided to match or mock Kuroo’s annoying obtuseness; so when he says “I work here,” calmly like they’re having water cooler chat in a departmental office, Kuroo grins like he’s won a prize.

He gazes back down at Yaku, takes in his dark green quarter-zip sweater, khaki pants that fit him _very_ well, and brogue shoes the color of cognac. Coupled with the bottom edge of a badge he sees hanging from a belt loop and poking out from under the hem of his sweater, he decides that Yaku actually _does_ present the pretty little picture of an up-and-coming university worker.

Kuroo decides to play along. “Really?” he asks with a bit more wide-eyed fascination than is probably necessary, though he _is_ abjectly curious. “I haven’t seen you at any functions so far this year, faculty _or_ student-led.” And because he can’t _possibly_ avoid the low-hanging fruit of his frankly _tiny_ stature and baby face, he adds, “Grad student? TA?”

Yaku gives half a shrug with the shoulder that isn’t connected to the hand holding a blade. His other hand is occupied with Kuroo’s shoulder, tense and ready to jostle against the taller man if he puts up a fight. The strength he puts into it shows he isn’t entirely convinced that it won’t happen.

“I’m a professor,” he answers, his voice tight in response to the bait. “And not in the sciences.” Despite the simplicity in his tone, Kuroo is quietly impressed at how he seems to make it sound backhanded. He can’t even remember how long it’s been since he’s seen the other, but now that he’s _here_ in front of him, all sharp edges and cunning wit, Kuroo wonders how he ever _forgot_.

Kuroo makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds like a mix of a laugh and a hum of acknowledgement. “Of course,” he says, and the way his tone curls around it throws quiet derisiveness back in Yaku’s face. “Tell me, then—what do you offer to the prized little inquiring minds that shuffle through these hallowed halls of academia?”

“If that’s your pretentious way of asking about my department, it’s history.”

The blade bites into Kuroo’s skin as he tips his head back as much as he’s able and _laughs_. Of course. How very _like_ Yaku to take up history.

“That explains why you’re here, then,” he says instead of taking a shot at how Yaku’s decided to pass his time. “Any idea when they said the humanities building is going to reopen? All of you teaching classes in here really cramps my style.”

“Apparently they fixed the burst pipe a couple days ago,” Yaku supplies. “Now they’re just taking care of the water and drying things out.”

“Fair enough,” Kuroo says with a shrug, and he is poised to say more before there is a _thump_ at the door, followed by the confused voice of someone on the other side. The taller between the two of them looks down at Yaku, between his face and the hand still poised at his neck, and raises an expectant eyebrow.

“Are you still hellbent on killing me in a university bathroom with a definite witness and no alibi?” he asks, leaning down despite the pain. The way Yaku’s eyes flash when Kuroo crowds into his space and speaks low and vaguely threatening is worth it.

Yaku narrows his eyes even further in response, something that looks like a promise glinting briefly in them, before he retracts the knife and flips it back in on itself. He turns on his heel and collects a leather messenger bag from the floor by the door.

“Are you busy?” Kuroo asks, pulling his phone from his pocket and reading half-past nine-thirty. He wonders vaguely what time Yaku schedules his lectures, and if he’s here because of them or because of _him_. He doesn’t wait for Yaku to reply before he declares, “Let’s get a drink.” His tone has a decisive degree of finality.

Kuroo listens intently for any movement on the other side of the door before he flicks the lock open. A smug part of him dwells briefly on how two men leaving a locked bathroom late after classes might look to outsiders.

It seems that the same thought has occurred to Yaku, if the way his ears look redder than normal is anything to go by. He glances up at Kuroo dubiously, but passes through the door as the taller man holds it open.

“Can you _drink_ anything?” he asks with the cock of an eyebrow.

Kuroo looks back at him, his eyes suddenly weighted and calculating as he takes Yaku in completely for the first time. As he stands against the scuffed grey walls and dusty floors of the basement hallway, his strawberry blonde curls are washed out by the fluorescent lights overhead. He stands tall and straight and there is a tightness in his posture that whispers to a sense of audacious courage lying under his skin, and that is _familiar_ , but there is a suggestion that things are not as they might have been since the last time they’ve seen each other. It feels like Kuroo is looking at Yaku through a pane of frosted glass, straining to catch the subtle differences in him with only a half-filled outline of how things _used_ to be. There is a changed scent that whispers behind a fresh watery cologne, and he _swears_ the way the light reflects off his eyes is different, and Kuroo’s brain is trying fit together all the pieces of this puzzle together as it stands in front of him. He narrows his eyes a little, evaluating, as he meets Yaku’s own.

“Can _you_?”

— — —

Kuroo takes them to a bar that’s close enough to campus to walk, but upscale enough that they don’t really recognize anyone young enough to be their students inside. They tuck into a secluded booth in the corner, and here Kuroo doesn’t even bother hiding the way he is staring at the man seated across from him. He is still trying to reconcile the things he knows to be true around this Yaku-shaped outline currently occupying all of his attention.

Yaku orders one of the bar’s signature mixed drinks off the little menu card that sits like a tiny sandwich board on the table, something that costs twelve dollars and his dignity as he trips over whatever embarrassing name the bar had given it. Kuroo orders a glass of a Cabernet he forgets the name of as soon as he passes the menu back to their waitress, and neither of them go for the appetizer she suggests to complement their choices.

They don’t really talk until she comes back around with their order, and Yaku passes the time by looking like he regrets letting go of Kuroo in the bathroom.

Despite the bewildering changes that have unfolded so unceremoniously in front of him tonight and left him turned on his head, that, at least, is an expression Kuroo recognizes.

Yaku toys with the tiny plastic straw in his drink, and Kuroo doesn’t bother hiding his surprise when he raises the glass to his lips and takes a sip.

Yaku holds his gaze as he sets the glass back down, and Kuroo decides to just _go for it_. Yaku would have told him to fuck off in no uncertain terms if he didn’t want to be here, if he didn’t have at least _some_ expectation of where Kuroo wanted to steer things by asking him here.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” he begins, tapping his fingers lightly on the table to guide him as he counts back absently. “Since Venice, I think—in what, ’14?”

“’19, actually,” Yaku corrects, and he stares him down evenly. “It was 1819.”

“Right, right,” Kuroo grins, gently twirling the stem of his wine glass between his fingers. “Leave it to the _history professor_ to be good with dates.”

“It’s more than just dates,” Yaku defends. “It’s about historical context and how the events influence later periods.”

There’s a pause, and Kuroo is poised to respond, but he stays his voice when Yaku reaches to squeeze the wedge of lime on the rim of his glass into his drink and looks like he is on the verge of saying something.

“But leave it to _you_ to not be concerned with things that happened in the past.”

Kuroo swallows down the cold feeling that drops into his stomach like lead, only to be vaporized in a moment by something white hot surging through him from the very deepest parts of himself.

“I think you should show me how it’s done, then,” he hums in response. “Here, let’s do an example together.” He lets go of the wine glass, rests his elbows on the table, and leans in close, his voice dropping low enough for Yaku’s ears only. “Explain how running me through with a sword in a back alley off Piazza San Marco during Carnevale influences… well, _today_. Support your answer using evidence from the text.”

Yaku raises an eyebrow at him, manages to swallow down a scoff, and breaks their eye contact as he takes another sip of his drink. He gives off the distinct countenance that it was a conscious choice on his part rather than him backing down. Leave it to him to make it seem like the very thing that was, maybe still _is_ his _livelihood_ is actually beneath him.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

He takes the words out of Kuroo’s mouth, twists the questions in his head into something better suited to besting him than providing clarity, and throws them back in his face. So he changes tactics—a deflection instead of weathering the blow.

Kuroo’s answering smile is brilliant and nauseatingly exaggerated. “I’m flattered,” he croons. “One little bite and you’re still hung up on me, huh?”

Now, the images come unbidden in his mind—the gold trim on Yaku’s beautifully-beaded tricorn hat catching the lantern light thrown in long, flickering shafts into the deep alleyway. The way he looked like a phantom with his volto mask, terrifying and gorgeous in its simplicity with the smooth white porcelain. The _feeling_ of Yaku’s eyes burning into his own from where he couldn’t see them, concealed behind the dark vacuousness of the mask’s eye-holes but no less intense, burning no less than white-flame hot like _every_ time they met and ran this ferocious game. Kuroo’s velvet and silk costume growing heavy under the weight of blood spilling from his body like a pierced keg; the _burn_ of the silver blade setting his entire body on fire and ripping the chains off the animalistic need to _survive_ that he’d always tried to keep latched tight inside himself.

The shiver that ripped through his body when he twisted forward and caged Yaku’s form into his own, smashed the mask from his face, and tore through collar and scarf to sink fangs into soft skin with feral intensity.

 _Carnevale_ , indeed.

“You left me for dead,” Yaku points out, and some deep part of Kuroo isn’t sure if he likes the way he says it like they’re discussing the weather and not like it’s something that angers him. Like the fact that he was in the bathroom, that he is here _at all_ is because Kuroo is a loose end he simply wants tied up and not because he is someone he shares a personal connection with.

Maybe he is a little fucked in the head if he now considers a vampire attacking a human a _personal connection_.

Maybe he is a little more fucked in the head if he prefers someone to hold a grudge against him instead of nothing at all.

On most days, Kuroo tries to be kind to himself for these things. _Living for four hundred years can do that,_ he reminds himself dutifully. The mundanities of normal life get frightfully boring frightfully fast. Enemies or not, Yaku’s dogged hunting of him had turned out to be some of the most _interesting_ handful of years in his entire long life. And the idea that perhaps that is about to start all over again fills him with a quiet thrill, but most of all a _scorching_ curiosity that swallows all of the oxygen in his heart, suffocating the other feelings that threaten to surface and denying them breath they need to thrive and hurt him.

Kuroo can tell Yaku is waiting for _him_ to ask the question that sits between them, the elephant seated proudly beside either one of them in their booth. Right now they both know that _Yaku_ is the one with the more interesting spin on the very typical catching-up question that goes something like, _“What have_ you _been up to for the past two hundred years?”_

Since Kuroo is the one that asked for this in the first place, he is going to be the one that continues to ask if he is going to get what he wants.

One exists, the other hunts them. These have been the rules of the game for as long as they’ve known each other, even if the labels of _hunter_ and _hunted_ have possibly switched hands.

“How?” is the question that finally comes out, and Kuroo feels his shoulders sag the tiniest bit while Yaku’s tense slightly. He looks at him for a long moment, like he picks up on the tuft of incredulity that Kuroo can’t manage to keep from his voice and is already working to spin it into threads of guilt to make a rope that has the power to hang him.

A vampire’s bite is poison, and their blood is the cure. This simple dichotomy has acted as the guiding principle for the lofty, shadowy part of vampiric society that named themselves the overseers of the race and now governs how to silently coexist. The first rule: to bite a human is to undertake a responsibility to help them live in a new normal, or watch them die rejecting it.

Two hundred years ago, Kuroo did neither. He chose a third alternative, one that wasn’t even _there_ , but created solely for him in the depths of his own desperation, and perhaps a little cowardice.

And now that the unthinkable has happened, that Yaku has somehow made his _own_ third option as well, he finds himself with a pathological need to be let in on a litany of truths he hasn’t earned the right to know.

How did he survive. How did he find help. How is he able to waltz back into Kuroo’s life looking like time simply paused in ravaging him, but decided to spare the common collateral damage of hunger and oft-unspoken fragility that accompanied supernatural eternity.

How is he able to finish his fucking drink and then guilelessly reach for Kuroo’s own across the table because they both know it’s of no use to him, that it’s a pretense. That this is _all_ a pretense.

How did the fundamental gap between the two of them _grow wider_ when Kuroo had begun to do the one thing that would drive them _closer than ever before_.

Yaku sips on Kuroo’s cabernet, considering his question. His eyes shine a moment too long in the low, hazy light of the bar for Kuroo to ever be satisfied with what he says next.

“Someone helped me,” he answers, and the utter _lack_ of pointedness in the way he says it smacks of the fact that he is more interested in subtly praising the _someone_ than condemning Kuroo for his abandonment. It causes his throat to burn more than when a knife was pressed to it.

Though they haven’t spoken in three lifetimes, Yaku’s ability to weaponize everything against Kuroo is as strong as ever. He waits, he watches, he thinks. He lives two steps ahead of everyone else and bides his time for them to catch up to whatever trap he’s laid. It’s why he’s been the only one among scores of vampire hunters that’s almost succeeded in killing him, why he’s one of the few people that has stayed on Kuroo’s mind from the first time they’d met.

“Who?” Kuroo finds himself asking, unbidden. One of his hands tightens into a fist on his thigh under the table when he realizes he’s slipped up. Yaku’s lips curl into a smile against the rim of the wine glass, and Kuroo can already see the deep berry stain growing on them from the oxblood hue of the grapes.

Sitting there in the low light against the red booth behind him with his doe eyes slightly lidded, Yaku reminds him of a fucking Caravaggio, if the artist had ever decided to paint blondes. Put a basket of fruit in his free hand and send him to the man’s studio to model and make those bedroom eyes and he would fit right into the gallery Kuroo remembers attending during his hundred-year stint in 19th-century Europe.

Yaku finishes the glass, replies to him with a single word, _“Koushi,”_ and waves their waitress over to ask for the check as Kuroo feels the world tilt to the side all around him.

 _Koushi Sugawara_ is a name traded uncertainly among groups that have lived entirely too long, that know a world fundamentally different from the one existing even a handful of centuries before now. It’s a name more than it is a person at this point, attached to conjectures about whether he was one of the people in the suspected group known as _Homer_ in Greece. Or perhaps he was an inventor that radicalized the physical world with his ingenuity; a doctor that cured an illness or pioneered germ theory; or a conquerer that built an empire; or a diplomat that smoothed things over and diverted wars. But the fact of the matter is that he is probably mentioned at least four times in a given world history textbook under just as many names.

In Kuroo’s opinion, it’s a name that shouldn’t sound so tender, familiar, and _practiced_ in Yaku’s mouth, like it belongs there.

Of course. How very _like_ Yaku to take up history.

Nobody really knows what Koushi Sugawara is—the general consensus is that vampire seems unlikely, though he has close ties with the community and has made great strides for them over the years. Many surmise the closest thing is _sorcerer_ or _witch_ , but even those words seem to insult the sparkling reputation that precedes him and sell his legend critically short. _Illustrious Being Above the Constraints of Time and Space_ seems apt, if a bit wordy; and if Kuroo had felt like a nobody to Yaku before, _now_ the feeling is impossible to categorize.

But it still finds the overwhelming urge to burn white-hot in the pit of his cold, empty stomach.

Yaku signs the single check that’s brought for the both of them, and levels Kuroo with an expectant gaze as he tucks his card back into his wallet. He’s offering more if he’s staying here, but Kuroo has to _ask_ in order to take it.

Kuroo wonders if seeing him prostrate himself for answers like this is _really_ that entertaining for him. The dangerously smug tilt of Yaku’s head says that it is.

Swallowing a bowl of silver nails sounds more appealing right now than asking what Koushi Sugawara was, _is_ to Yaku.

But the part of him that still _needs to know_ , that maybe, _undeniably_ still feels responsible for all of this, wins out over the tatters of his pride that are spitting and threatening to act out not unlike the way he did in Italy.

Yaku’s talent has always seemed to lie in throwing him out of sorts.

“How?” he asks again, not managing to mask the displeasure in his voice but still reigning it in enough to keep his fingers from scrubbing over his face like he’s tired of this conversation thread already.

“And here I remember you being a fairly engaging conversation partner, but we’re down to one-word answers,” Yaku says around a sigh. He drums his fingers thoughtfully on the table, probably trying to decide how much Kuroo deserves to know. Or how much he is going to make him work for this. “ _How_ many languages do you know again? I remember that you used to brag about that.”

“ _Yaku_ ,” Kuroo answers instead, his voice dropping a little. Part of him recognizes what a _hypocrite_ he is, having traipsed around Yaku all night with the exact kind of blasé provocation the other is throwing back into his face now, but he can’t find it in himself to care anymore. “How did Suga fix you. How are you _here_.”

Suga is not a vampire. And because of that, Yaku should be dead.

But instead he is _here_ , handsome and dangerous and cunning as ever, and the fact that Kuroo only had a hand in the _bad_ part of why that may be and not _any_ of the currently-inexplicable _good_ part makes him want to crawl out of the skin that now feels too tight on his body.

Yaku holds the intense gaze he receives across the table without an ounce of trepidation. He’s weighing his options carefully in his mind, treating Kuroo like nothing more than a feral little kitten that’s lashing out and throwing a temper tantrum. He looks like he’s about to treat him gently, to look down his nose at him like a petulant child that needs a slow, measured lecture, and Kuroo’s fingers itch to throw the table between them, to do _something_ to bring the anger, the fire, the determination back to Yaku’s eyes that he _knows_ used to exist.

“I couldn’t tell you, actually,” Yaku finally admits, carding a hand through his hair around a small sigh. There’s sincerity in his voice now, and Kuroo holds his breath without meaning to. “There was a lot of magic. Potions. Circles. It all just felt like one long night, but Kou—” He hesitates, Kuroo grits his teeth. At the sudden vulnerability in his voice or the _name_ , he doesn’t know. “He said it had been five years by the time I felt like myself again.”

It’s those words that throw a bucket of ice water on the anger sizzling in his stomach.

Most humans beg for death in the first couple days of a changing if a vampire decides to treat them with their own blood. Those that are left without the option to change, bitten carelessly and left untreated, go feral and insane. It’s these pitiful in-between creatures that most vampire hunters occupy their time with tracking down because they are the biggest loose cannons, the biggest threats to human populations. They are usually dead in a week from the pain and hunger of an incomplete transformation, or, if they’re lucky, killed more quickly and mercifully by those that purposefully track them down.

Kuroo remembers his own changing, and though he barely remembers _when_ it happened any more, he remembers the distinct agony that cut through everything else and left him out of his mind for five days. Yaku existed in that unimaginable in-between for five _years_. Kuroo’s not sure whether that is salvation or torture.

The pieces of this puzzle are fitting together a little more clearly now, and the picture doesn’t look as appealing as he expected.

“So you’re still human,” is what Kuroo finds himself saying instead of any number of things he probably _should_. Things that probably sound like apologies or admissions of regret or guilt.

“I’m still human,” Yaku confirms. As if to rub it in Kuroo’s face, as the waitress stops by to retrieve the check, he asks for a glass of water.

“But you’re here,” Kuroo hedges. _You’re still human and yet you’re in front of me two centuries years later._ A part of him wonders a bit suddenly that perhaps this is all a dream, or a figment of his imagination. Maybe his idle thoughts have coalesced into something much bigger than he expected. Still, he finds himself asking, “Why?”

A smile curls over Yaku’s face, pretty and fond and it inexplicably makes Kuroo want to break something. “Koushi has some pretty impressive magic.”

There’s a definitive shift in the space between them after that, and Yaku takes a couple more sips from his water before he grabs his bag and slides out of the booth. Kuroo follows his lead and keeps two measured steps behind Yaku as they exit the bar. The smaller man turns around to look up at him, and Kuroo feels something snap a little in his chest at how ethereal he looks in the moonlight.

There’s a moment where an unreadable calmness passes over Yaku’s face, like he’s folded back into himself and contemplating something in a world all his own that Kuroo can’t see. He knows he doesn’t deserve to exist in that space after everything he’s heard tonight, but it doesn’t stop him from selfishly wanting to try and force the door.

“See you around, Tetsurou,” Yaku says in a measured, soft voice, and Kuroo feels the brush of his shoulder against his bicep as Yaku slips past him on the sidewalk to presumably head back home.

— — —

Yaku is home for approximately half an hour, which is enough time for him to change into his pajamas, brush his teeth and wash his face, before there is a rap at his door and a decidedly nasty answering hiss from his cat, whose favorite spot to linger is sprawled out on the cool wood floor of the apartment entryway. Whoever is on the other side of his door is someone he _already_ does not like, and Yaku doesn’t wholly disagree with that sentiment.

He looks down at himself, evaluates the toothpaste stain on his shirt—a soft-worn, lilac holdover from a life filled with warmth—and his wrinkled sleep pants, and opens the door anyways.

Kuroo is there, leaning against the doorframe and _still_ looking like he walked out of a menswear catalogue in his grey cashmere sweater and charcoal coat from an hour ago.

The taller man looks down at him with a faint pallor of disbelief on his face, as if he hadn’t actually thought any of this through, much less expected the other to open the door.

Yaku is less surprised by this whole development.

“Just wanted to make sure I got home safe?” he asks, nudging his cat back from where he’s hackled at his ankles and glaring up at Kuroo across the threshold with sharp green eyes.

Kuroo’s own gaze flickers down to the animal before sliding back up onto Yaku again, and he can feel the other’s gaze as it lingers on the exposed wings of his collarbones and the curve of his throat. He wonders idly if Kuroo is able to make out the two whitish-pale sunbursts along the side where skin was pierced and torn, now knitted back together and smooth to the touch but still a constant reminder of their indelible connection.

“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do after a date?” Kuroo counters.

Yaku chuckles in spite of himself and raises a dubious eyebrow. “That was a date?”

The taller man studies him for a moment, and something dark flickers over his face. He should be used to these mercurial changes in his mood, but sometimes it’s still a little difficult for Yaku to retain the veneer that he doesn’t always know what’s going on in Kuroo’s mind. He’s been a puzzle he could never quite figure out, no matter how long he watched him, studied him, tried to piece it all together. He’s been taking up valuable space in his brain for far too long, but he’s never quite been able to throw all of this out.

“Did Suga give you eternal life before or after you started fucking?”

He doesn’t have the time nor the will to keep the surprise off his face. He should have known that despite all of Kuroo’s complexities, despite the fact that most of their relationship has existed as a tangled foxtrot of each trying to best the other, it _would_ actually be this simple.

“You’re jealous,” he says, his voice a little cowed like he really didn’t expect Kuroo to shine a spotlight on his insecurity the way he _just did_. It’s because, well, he really _didn’t_ —Kuroo has never been one to bend so easily, to wear his heart on his sleeve, at least when it comes to Yaku.

Kuroo doesn’t say anything. His face darkens a little, completely serious, and Yaku’s cat hisses somewhere below them. He lets out a short breath halfway between a sigh and a huff, and makes a decision. He shuffles aside enough for Kuroo to understand the tacit invitation into his apartment.

“If this is a date, it’s not a good one,” Yaku says as he retreats into the kitchen. He doesn’t have anything to offer Kuroo, so he ducks into the fridge for his water pitcher and fetches a glass from the cabinet overhead. But the other man follows him in, and before Yaku blinks he feels the cold press of a hard chest against his back. The distinct scent of cologne surrounds him all at once, something with crisp top-notes lingering over a base that smells chilly and resinous. When his lips part on a breath, he tastes ivy leaves twisting over the marble of a forgotten mausoleum or mist that lingers on the slush of a murky bog in the dead of winter. His brain whirs to life again, cogs caught and grinding between each other as he struggles for coherency. His mouth starts to run away from him. “U-Usually you don’t bring up exes over drinks. That’s kind of a cardinal rule in these _modern_ times, but it’s understandable if you can’t keep up, _old man_.”

“Exes,” Kuroo repeats, low and thoughtful as his hands reach around Yaku’s and pour him a glass of water, and one thumb presses into the inside of his wrist as he finishes. It’s still tender, but it hasn’t yet decided whether or not to bruise from Kuroo’s previous crushing grip on it. Yaku feels magic singing under his skin as it quietly works to knit damaged capillaries and tissue back together, and thinks of lifetimes ago now when he first received the quiet, warm reassurance that he was _fixed_ from the inside out, that nothing would ever really harm him again.

 _“It’s what you deserve,”_ echoes sweetly in his head, the voice tender but certain. It takes him back to almond croissants and the burnt sugar smell of crème brûlée, mixed with the warm inviting petrichor that meant snacking on their old garden terrace on rainy June afternoons. _“You’ve_ earned _that much for coming this far in the face of the unimaginable.”_

A part of his heart skips a beat, perfectly encased in crystallized memories the color of dove wings and sun-melted chocolate bars.

Yaku stills that part of him, and turns around to look up into the _face_ of the unimaginable. It’s looking back down at him with something unreadable shimmering in eyes so hazel they’re golden. He swears they’re glowing in the dim light from the fridge that’s still halfway open.

“If I was still with him, I’d be _with_ him,” he finds himself saying, offering up a piece of information that Kuroo hasn’t actually asked for. The hum he gets in response is so close to a purr Yaku could guess that the other man spent his downtime disguised as a cat.

He certainly _looks_ as self-satisfied as one with the smile that slowly spreads across his face. “And you’re here _now_ ,” he says, slow and considering. “With _me_. _Why_ is that, Morisuke?”

His name sounds different in Kuroo’s mouth, like it’s a crystal keepsake Kuroo is tossing carelessly between his hands as he tries to decide what to do with it. Like it’s treasured and dismissed all at once.

It’s in the quiet space that follows his words, in the darkness of his kitchen in the middle of the night, that Yaku realizes the game they used to play with one another is long gone. It ended in stalemate in a dark alleyway, soaked in blood with the distinct flavor of death, and perhaps, despite the horror and the fallout, it was for the best. It had been a game with clear objectives, but no desirable prize for the winner.

A long intermission followed, spent in a world he tried to put back together piece by piece, and now a new game has begun. It has less rules, yet infinitely more complications, but Yaku refuses to back down. But the way he already feels like he’s being torn in so many separate directions already has him scrambling to be prepared, even though the starting gun fired hours, perhaps even days, weeks, _months_ before.

Against his will, Yaku’s heart is hammering inside his chest, making his ribs vibrate and his spine quiver. He knows Kuroo can hear and feel it too, and Yaku feels the slow drip of honey against his skin as eyes track from his down to the expanse of throat that’s always bared when he has to crane his head to look up at the other.

Kuroo raises an eyebrow in silent, inquiring permission, and Yaku raises his own in challenging turn.

— — —

Yaku’s blood tastes like fireworks.

Not in the romantic way one might expect, accompanied by American midsummer celebrations and fingers sticky with popsicles; but in the way where it carries the acrid tang of smoke and gunpowder and the burnt concrete that’s left behind as the explosives whiz into the air with a piercing whistle. It sits heavy on his tongue and in his nose and his throat twitches a little in warning as he swallows it down.

He realizes his lips are going a little numb too, as his mouth fumbles against the wet wound on the side of the other’s neck. His head feels like it’s being slowly stuffed with cotton, and the world starts to narrow down into singular foci to cope with how _poisoned_ everything begins to feel.

 _Fuck Koushi Sugawara_ is the first thing he manages to think of as his body slowly starts to go haywire.

He jolts a little when Yaku slips out of his arms, grabs his glass of water from the counter, and settles down on the couch he can see from over the breakfast bar. He feels the slow trickle of blood down his chin, blinks sluggishly, and follows after him. The world tilts a little, and Kuroo tries to remember the last time he felt _drunk_ like this. Not in the good, happy way he remembers coupled with golden-toned nights and enchanted drinks, but like his body is made of sandbags and rubber bands and his brain’s instructions to it have been passed back and forth several times in jumbled translation.

“Are you always such a messy eater?” Yaku asks as he eyes him when Kuroo sits down on the cushion beside him. There is blood on the soft curve of his jaw, in the hollow dip of his collarbone, slipping down his neck and soaking into the collar of his shirt. This image before him is something cast in both sharp relief and dreamy watercolor all at once by his addled mind, and Kuroo thinks it’s perhaps he closest he’ll ever get to seeing God. “Have you had enough?”

The lilt to Yaku’s voice and the way Suga’s magic burns in his stomach coalesce into a challenge Kuroo decides he’d rather die than back down from. He turns, grabs Yaku by the slender hips, and drags him over to straddle his lap. The other man settles quickly, wraps a hand around his back and knits one into the wild dark hair on the back of his head, and relaxes his shoulder to give him more room.

Kuroo is careful to re-enter where he first broke in, and his fingers tighten on the small of Yaku’s back when he hears the barest hint of a whimper around gritted teeth. It’s painful, it always is, the physical sting of piercing flesh amplified by the immediate sink of poison into one’s unfortunate tissue.

But now, with the bane of Suga’s magic in his blood, it seems like the threat of the vampire’s poison is totally neutralized. A quiet part of him knows that he’s _more_ than earned that advantage, that protection. Yaku has endured something wholly unimaginable and has come out the other end all the more dangerous for it. A precious piece of china shattered once, but instead of being put back together the way it was someone reformed him entirely, sharpening every broken edge and facing them out so Kuroo would tear his fingers to ribbons when he tried to draw near. Frankly, it’s what they both deserve.

He feels a pain in his stomach he hasn’t known in _any_ recent memory as he drinks, and recognizes that his body is truly saying that enough is _enough_. He finally stops when he crosses an invisible line, just over the cusp of too much that causes him to pull away from Yaku’s neck with a rough cough and the barest hints of a retch.

 _Fuck_ Koushi Sugawara.

“You really are hopeless,” Yaku says from somewhere that sounds far-off as Kuroo leans back against the couch and tries to keep his vision from tunneling more than it already is. When he comes-to, it’s to the feeling of delicate, strong fingers gripping his jaw and demanding his attention and eyes. Kuroo watches with lidded eyes in slow motion as the other draws his face closer, and hears more than he feels it when Yaku kisses his numb lips. After a moment, he pulls away and gazes down at him with something unreadable glittering in his eyes. His pupils are blown wide and dark, and he reckons his own are too, wrapped in the thinnest slivers of irises tinted red.

“I came back to you,” Yaku whispers into their shared space, finally answering the question he’d asked in the kitchen that already feels like a lifetime ago. Yaku slowly grazes the tip of his tongue up across Kuroo’s lips to lap some of the blood that still lingers there, and Kuroo is no longer sure who is making him crazier at the moment—Suga and his damned magic or Yaku himself. “Because now more than ever, my existence is a pain in your jealous ass, and I don’t even have to put the work in hunting you anymore.”

Kuroo chokes on half a laugh when he realizes it’s a mistake to get the sound out with how raw his throat feels.

Yaku is right, actually. The hunter that is able to destroy vampires best is the one who can do it with little effort on their part at all. His hands are heavy as lead as he runs one of them up the curve of Yaku’s waist, looking up at him appraisingly. Somewhere along the way, Yaku’s pulled off his shirt and is now using the fabric to soak up the blood spilled over his neck and keep pressure on the wound. Kuroo feels almost bereft at the sight, but pushing himself even farther past his broken limits and throwing up for the first time in centuries is decidedly low on his list of priorities tonight.

“You never had to in the first place,” Kuroo declares at length, his throat presumably still a little tight and ragged from the way his voice catches a little as he speaks. “Where is the fun in hunting something you’ve had pinned under your thumb since the very beginning?”

His head is swimming from the protective magic in the other’s blood, and his whole body is beleaguered with fatigue he hasn’t felt in decades. But that doesn’t mean his words aren’t completely sincere. Though the context in which he speaks them now is so far removed from his expectations, beyond _anything_ he could have imagined two hundred years ago, that it seems unbelievable.

Judging from the way that Yaku is looking at him in _genuine_ surprise, he must read the sincerity in his words, too, and doesn’t know what to make of it.

“Shut up,” Yaku says, but the tone sounds confused to them both. Yaku stands up abruptly after that and pads down a hallway that presumably leads to his bedroom. Kuroo is slower getting to his feet, but he trails behind until Yaku gets to the door and pauses.

“Morisuke,” Kuroo murmurs, drawing up right behind the other. Yaku turns to look up at him, his mouth open to reply, and Kuroo feels it this time when he leans down and slots their lips together. They both keep it surprisingly chaste, so much so that it’s almost _hesitant_ , and Kuroo opens his eyes a split second before Yaku’s so he catches the way blonde lashes flutter slightly over freckled cheeks.

Even in the shadows, he catches the darkening shade of Yaku’s neck and ears, and the other disappears through the bedroom door with a quick huff.

“Goodnight,” he calls in a singsong through the door, and turns on his heel to settle back down on the couch.

He sits, boneless and thoughtful for a moment as he looks up at the ceiling and wills away the starbursts swimming painfully through his head.

Yaku didn’t invite him into his bedroom, so it’s going to be a _long_ night without him. But he also didn’t kick him out, and Kuroo finds a smile working its way onto his lips despite himself.

That, at least, is an opening he can work with.

**Author's Note:**

> do people still even use the term "plot bunny" anymore. bc uh this. this is definitely it.
> 
> Honestly tbh I have Many Thoughts on this that were too numerous to fit here - persnaps this gets a continuation some day, or some semi-coherent yelling into the lawless wastes of social media.
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH for reading! ♡ I truly, truly appreciate the time anyone takes out of their day to take a look at something I throw on here.
> 
> twitter is the game, [@cherielimeade](https://twitter.com/cherielimeade) is my name


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